The Hulk Hands-On

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By IGN

With a June 20 release date soon approaching, the motion picture version of The Hulk continues to pick up momentum. Burning up the airwaves with its well-hidden teaser and directed by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon helmsman Ang Lee, the movie is definitely Universal Studios' biggest venture of the year with little evidence to refute it. The company's second biggest project, however, could very well be the videogame version of the picture from Radical Entertainment. Loosely based on the events taking place after the film, the digital rendition of The Hulk is on the threshold of surprising unsuspecting fans and jaded action fans alike; and from where we stand, it's in a positive way.

Check out Jeremy Dunham's take on the game and then keep reading for Hilary's Xbox-specific impressions.

Dunham's Take: We had the opportunity to give The Hulk a test drive on three of its five expected systems late yesterday afternoon; Going hands-on with the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox versions for multiple hours before finally caving in and letting the folks at Vivendi Universal take their copy back. And while we found ourselves on the fence concerning how good this game would be going in, we were utterly and totally surprised by how much potential The Hulk really has.

At its core, The Hulk is a super-powered action beat 'em up with plenty of fighting abilities and destructible objects. Control-wise, our hero's manipulation is pretty simple: with X acting as attack, A jumping, and B serving as a grapple. Given 45 different moves regardless of his condition, the green goliath can do everything from standard jabs and uppercuts to incredibly powerful double-fisted head blows and roundhouses. Additionally, these moves can be chained into custom combinations to take on multiple enemies or beat down more powerful foes. Some of our favorites maneuvers to pull off in the early version was a left-right-left upper cut combo that chain into a jumping downward kick for major damage. And that's only an inkling of the type of stuff players can do.

Plowing through your enemies or taking too much punishment affects both of your two existing meters: your health bar and rage meter. Self-explanatory and devoid of explanation, the health bar can only be replenished by gamma-irradiated power-ups dropped by fallen foes. Luckily, the Hulk can take a lot of damage and maintaining your health bar early on isn't too much of a problem. On the flipside, you have the Rage Meter; which in keeping tradition with the comic book, allows the jade giant to grow stronger as he grows angrier. Though the difference can't be seen when playing through with a half-filled rage meter, the evidence is overwhelming once the meter is full and flashing. All of Hulk's attacks double in power, and the ability to perform two specialized rage moves (either a super hand slap performed by Y and X, or the super stomp via Y and B). Once the rage move has been performed, the meter calms back to almost nothingness, and you have to start over from scratch. So far the whole system works pretty well, and other than a few "difficulty-balancing" issues that Radical is still working on, is pretty much set in stone.

But that's not all that Hulk can do. Not by a long shot. Completely interactive and destructible, the environments can be Destroyed or used as weapons at practically any moment. In the dream-sequence tutorial that serves as the first level for instance, tanks, helicopters, giant propane tanks, and even rocks can be picked up and used as armaments. And while Hulk will automatically hit whatever being or structure is nearest to him if you decide to throw that object, the developers have also implemented a targeting system to accompany it. Accessed by holding the right trigger in conjunction with the right thumbstick, gamers will be able to cycle through every target on the screen with relative ease. It takes a bit getting used to at first, but it seems to work. You'll need to master the system quickly too; there can be up to 10 attacking enemies onscreen at any one time.

These elements are also essential to defeating the boss creatures you'll face as you progress. Taken straight out of the comic book and movie, the five badass nemesis range from impressive (Madman, Flux) to diabolical (Ravage, Half-Life, and The Leader), with multiple methods to defeating each of them. So while you could certainly spend most of your time beating down Half-Life in the Alcatraz level, a better idea would be to destroy the surrounding power generators and throw him into one, thereby lessening your challenge substantially. Yet another testament to the open-endedness of The Hulk.